The York PressAesthetica prize artists reflect on our age of anxiety at York Art GalleryCharles HutchensonJune 26, 2018Among the stand-outs are Shauna Frischkorn's McWorkers portraits. "They're done in a Renaissance portraiture style but they're all of fast-food workers, calling into question 'McJobs' and social status that contrasts with the original portraits of people of great wealth," says Cherie. "There's a repetition to the uniform that's worn which shows how that impacts on individuality, and Shauna's work also reflects on our 'fast culture': fast food, the obesity epidemic, landfill waste."

CBS Sunday MorningThe Sweat of Their Face: Portraits of American WorkersMichelle MillerApril 15, 2018Art: 'Looking' at portraits in HarrisburgThe SentinelJoseph and Barrie Ann GeorgeFebruary 14, 2018Shauna Frischkorn’s large format chromogenic prints in the series “Game Boys” and “McWorkers” capture the young and socially powerless. In these prints, their faces are larger than life, giving the viewer the opportunity to look into their eyes in an attempt to understand, and in some ways see ourselves.

From Sandwich Shops To Cotton Mills, Art That Honors The American WorkerNPR (Morning Edition)Susan StambergFebruary, 1, 2018A food worker in a Subway sandwich store gets the full treatment from photographer Shauna Frischkorn. She puts him against a black background, and lights his face to look sculptural. The black and green Subway cap sits on his red hair like a crown. It's like a Renaissance portrait, but with a little smile — a twinkle. "She's restoring his humanity through the pose and lighting," Moss says.

Working Class PerspectivesCenter for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State UniversityWorker Portraits: Contradictions and ContingencySherry LinkonJanuary 27, 2018In the early 21st century, it’s almost impossible to imagine a successful businessman asking a painter or photographer to depict him as, say, a Subway sandwich maker. The conditions of work in the contingent economy not only undermine what the Portrait Gallery calls “this country’s value system.” They also undermine the potential for workers to find pride and satisfaction on the job. That may be one reason Frischkorn refers to her photos of fast-food workers, which mimic the style of Renaissance portraits, as “ironic.” The images emphasize the workers’ humanity in an era when dignity on the job has become out of reach along with expectations that hard work will pay off in “self-improvement and social mobility.”

The Sweat of their Face: Portraying American WorkersThe National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian InstitutionWashington, DCNovember 3, 2017-September 3, 2018Curated by David C. Ward and Dorothy Moss“The Sweat of Their Face” combines art and social history with representations of American laborers across genres and centuries of art. Artists such as Winslow Homer, Dorothea Lange, Elizabeth Catlett and Lewis Hine depict laborers throughout the changing landscape of America; from child and slave laborers to miners, railway and steel workers, to the modern gradual disappearance of the worker. Approximately 75 objects in all media (including video) highlight a point of connection between the artists and their predominately anonymous subjects.

This exhibition will feature loans from such notable institutions as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Phillips Collection and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, among others...This exhibition is curated by Portrait Gallery Curator of Painting and Sculpture Dorothy Moss and Historian Emeritus, David C. Ward. An accompanying catalogue will feature essays from both curators, as well as British art historian John Fagg.

Looking In: Portraits and Their StoriesSusquehanna Museum of ArtHarrisburg, PennsylvaniaFebruary 10 - May 20, 2018Looking In: Portraits and Their Stories features a curated selection of significant 20th and 21st Century works from regional museums and private collections. The selected portraits express stories of both the artists and their subjects, reflecting movements in modern and contemporary art history.

Exhibit of the WeekThe WeekLoren TalbotJanuary 12, 2018The exhibition “defines laborers in the most traditional sense, as workers whose sweat pours out due to heat and physical exhaustion.”Still, amid the familiar century-old images from such celebrated muckrakers as Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine, you will find “a few welcome surprises.” Winslow Homer’s Girl With Pitchfork creates a hero out of a young hay baler leaning on a towering farm tool, and Shauna Frischkorn has done the same, more than a century later, by creating a 2014 photo portrait of a Subway sandwich shop worker that gives him the dignity of a modern Rembrandt.

The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying the American WorkerSmithsonian BooksHardcover Book Editors, David C. Ward and Dorothy Moss2017Work always has been a central construct in the United States, influencing how Americans measure their lives and assess their contribution to the wider society. Work also has been valued as the key element in the philosophy of self-improvement and social mobility that undergird the American value system. Yet work can also be something imposed upon people: it can be exploitative, painful, and hard. This duality is etched into the faces of the people depicted in the portraits showcased in The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers. This companion volume to an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery examines working-class subjects as they appear in artworks by artists including Winslow Homer, Elizabeth Catlett, Danny Lyon, and Shauna Frischkorn. This richly illustrated book charts the rise and fall of labor from the empowered artisan of the eighteenth century through industrialization and the current American business climate, in which industrial jobs have all but disappeared. It also traces the history of work itself through its impact on the men and women whose laboring bodies are depicted. The Sweat of Their Face is a powerful visual exploration of the inextricable ties between American labor and society.

Picturing Youth: Selections from McWorkers and GameboysNovember 3, 2017-January 7, 2018Alvin Butz GalleryThe Banana FactoryShauna Frischkorn’s photographs deal with popular culture in everyday life. Picturing Youth includes a selection of photographs from two of Frischkorn’s bodies of work, McWorkers and Game Boys. Within Shauna’s work she creates an ironic yet historical dialogue between her contemporary subjects and the style of Renaissance portraiture. The subjects are frozen in a moment in time, yet they create a commentary on ongoing challenges faced by working class individuals and a theatrical quality to video game players who appear passive but are actually performing fast-paced maneuvers and executing split-second decisions in a moment of concentration.

The Sweat of Their Face’: Portraits of the American Worker, Through the CenturiesTHE DAILY BEASTKelly CamineroSeptember 4, 2017"Work ethic is a core value of America. It is the fuel that propels the tenacity of the American dream. The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers, a book that accompanies a coming exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., showcases a multifaceted collection of hardworking Americans that represent social history across centuries of art. Artists such as Dorothea Lange, Winslow Homer, and Elizabeth Catlett depict the shifting landscape of America; from steel workers to child and slave laborers and miners. In addition, the National Portrait Gallery, which will open the exhibit on Nov. 3, analyzes working-class subjects as they appear in artworks by artists including Shauna Frischkorn, Lewis Hine, and others."

Playing With SoundAn examination of the player's experience of sound in video games and the many ways that players interact with the sonic elements in games.Karen CollinsMIT Press, Jan 11, 2013, page 62

Course and Discourse at The State MuseumFebruary 15 - May 5, 2013An Exhibition of Professor and Student Artwork features the outstanding BA and BFA programs in our surrounding community and highlights the conversations that occur between professors and students during the creative process. Art professors from seven regional colleges and universities were selected and each chose one student to include. The title, Course and Discourse, refers not only to classes and dialogue, but also to the development of personalities, visual languages and life paths. The following institutions will be participating: Franklin and Marshall College, Millersville University, PA College of Art and Design, Lebanon Valley College, Messiah College, Elizabethtown College and Wilson College. The exhibit will run from February 15 until May 5, 2013.

Lancaster LensLancaster Museum of Art, Lancaster, PA13 ArtistsJanuary 6-February 26, 2012"Lancaster Museum of Art Focuses on Focus"Stephen KopfingerWhat the camera captures is but a fraction of what the eye of man sees. But that's still an impressive output, if an upcoming exhibit at Lancaster Museum of Art is any indication. Opening Jan. 6 during First Friday —the monthly celebration of arts and culture in downtown Lancaster — the exhibit, titled "Lancaster Lens," focuses on the works of 13 regional photographers whose points of view are as varied as the photographic landscape.

Audio / Visual, the PowerHouse Arena, Brooklyn, NYOctober 20-November 20, 2011Sam Barzilay"It is with the utmost excitement that we share with you the list of participating artists for the New York Photo Festival's upcoming juried exhibition, Audio/Visual. We would like to extend our gratitude to our stellar jury for their time, and their unceasing commitment to photography. But most importantly, we would like to thank all of you for your continued support, and we look forward to seeing you at the opening of what promises to be a truly exceptional Fall Invitational show!"

The Star-Ledger / Newark, New Jersey"In Philadelphia"We see glaze-eyed kids staring at Xbox and "Grand Theft Auto."April 28, 2007Photographer Shauna Frischkorn sees "saints in states of ecstasy or rapture," according to the press release for her show this weekend at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. "Game Boys: Photographs of Shauna Frischkorn" shows teenage boys in the throes of satisfying their video-game fix. They're photographed in the style of Renaissance portraits, with chiaroscuro lighting.The photos are both creepy and beautiful.

Mother Jones Magazine"Game Boys: Photo Essay by Shauna Frischkorn"Clara JefferyMarch-April, 2007Eyes cast upward in ecstatic contemplation—500 or 600 years ago these expressions might have been found in a work by Raphael or Guido Reni. But Shauna Frischkorn, an associate professor of art at Pennsylvania's Millersville University, has captured the agony and the ecstasy of our own age in a wide-ranging series of portraits: no monks or saints, just ordinary teenage boys playing Halo. She says that "while they seem passive, they're actually performing fast-paced maneuvers and executing split-second decisions, making these portraits of intense concentration."

Popular PhotographyWhere to Go and What to SeeMarch 27, 2007This week I'm intrigued by two shows that each feature two photographers who study the space and/or moments between two extremes. First we have the Jan Ebeling and Shauna Frischkorn exhibit at Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art in New York. Ebeling's diptych portraits of adolescent boys immersed in their respective worlds of sport (a Spanish Torrero, an Albanian wrestler) portray young men tottering between childhood and adulthood. The full-length image shows of their physical prowess and emphasizes their position as masters of their sport. But the other image, a close-up of the boy's face, often reveals the uncertainty and even fear that lies just below adolescent facades of bravado. Frischkorn's large portraits also capture adolescent boys, this time immobilized and nearly beatific as they stare at the video game their out-of-sight hands frantically control. As with Ebeling, a thoughtful commentary emerges from layered juxtapositions: inert faces vs. flying fingers, Carravagesque lighting vs. mundane subject matter, concentration vs. obliviousness.

Conscientious / Shauna FrischkornContemporary Photographersby Jorg ColbergMarch 13, 2007For those wondering what it takes to shoot a good portrait, have a look at Shauna Frischkorn’s Gamers portraits. So maybe for a good portrait you don’t even need any interaction between photographer and subject?

Aperture Foundation / Portfolio PrizeFinalist2005Editorial Statement/Lesley A. Martin"Typically, portraits are not known for their ability to capture states of action. However, Shauna Frischkorn’s series Game Boys adds a contemporary twist to the form: By photographing teenage boys in states of careful concentration as they play video games, she reveals that today the portrait can capture active moments, as our hardwired world redefines what it means to be active.

Video games are far from a new cultural phenomenon—arcades emerged in the 1970s, even the home video game systems that privatized the experience have now been around for decades. The recent sea change, though, is that the video game industry has adopted the modes of Hollywood films—trailer promotions for games are shown in movie theaters and sophisticated narratives immerse players not just in winning a game, but in becoming an active participant in an evolving narrative. Frischkorn’s smooth-faced gamers, whether playing the notorious Grand Theft Auto, Medal of Honor: Frontline, or Need for Speed, wear the entranced gaze of moviegoers absorbed by a good plot.

In her artist’s statement she writes that her studio setting “lends a theatrical quality to this commonplace activity.” This sense of theatrics created through her attention to lighting and composition, evokes not only the cinematic styling of video games but also the origins of her traditional approach to portraiture, calling to mind Old Master paintings and their subjects’ expressions of religious ecstasy"

NY Arts MagazineTuesday, March 30, 2004Upon entering the gallery space we find Game Boys by Shauna Frischkorn. This is a series of photographs of young boys staring at a tv monitor supposedly playing video games. A certain tension develops around these C-Prints as the viewer may wonder if the boys are actually posing or simply playing.

Philadelphia CityPaper / ArtsbeatCenter for the Photographic ImageOctober 10-16, 2002Halpert also singles out one artist whose work particularly struck him. "Shauna Frischkorn did a series called Gameboys.' Each depicts an individual young man looking up, and his face is illuminated by the glow of what apparently is a video game. These are kind of stark portraits set against a dark background, but you almost instantly get what they're about and the statement they're making."